Though people go about their everyday activities, the enormous alien Tripods have effectively not only stagnated human civilization through the use of mind-controlling Caps, but retroverted technology to a level similar to the Medieval Ages.

A retroverted uterus, a lacerated perineum, such minor difficulties as flat feet, such major ones as valvular disease of the heart, are causes of ill health to be ruled out before "nervousness" (or its medical equivalents) is to be diagnosed.

The point where the retroverted motion of the canal waters will commence, when it is filled, is somewhat nearer the Lake than where a horizontal line drawn from the bottom next the Lake will meet the surface water of the canal.

Every one of them has told her that all her troubles are due to the fact that her uterus is flexed and retroverted, that it presses on the rectum (this being the cause of her chronic constipation and of the obstructed menstrual flow, the congestion, pain, etc.), and that the womb must be placed in its normal position by a surgical operation.

The recent attempt to enforce this retroverted law upon a grand scale, in calling a mighty railway corporation to account for the discharge of a dozen or so out of several thousand employes, is no stronger proof of this curious reversal of positions than the demand of my whilom cook that I should set my hand to a lie.